Although most of our favorite apps and services are free, some of our most favorite online services are the ones we're willing to upgrade or pay for. Doing so supports the developers and also gets us some terrific premium features. Here's a look at ten of the best online services that are actually worth the price tag.

We love free stuff, especially free apps and services. But sometimes you need to pony up a little…
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Netflix: This movie rental and streaming service was the top recommendation by far, and it's not hard to see why. Netflix is affordable, has a vast movie library, and can stream to so many different devices. It was also recently readers' top pick for best web video service.

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Amazon Prime: Fast 2-day shipping from the Amazon superstore is also a great value if you and your family purchase a lot of merchandise from Amazon. The added bonus of instant video streaming for Prime members is an added incentive. (You could also get Prime for free with a student EDU address or by being a parent, though.)

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Xmarks: Another convenient utility worth paying for (and a LastPass company), Xmarks syncs your bookmarks across browsers and platforms. In fact, it was previously voted the best tool for the bookmark management job. Premium subscribers can use XMarks on iOS, Android, and BlackBerry; view their bookmarks on Dolphin Browser HD; and get a longer backup/restore history.

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Xbox Live: Gold and family memberships for Xbox LIVE let you play games online with friends, watch movies from Netflix and Hulu Plus, view live sports from ESPN, and more. So it's pretty much a given for Xbox fans.

Hulu Plus: Subscribing to this TV streaming service is a great way to cut the cable cord. The $8/month Plus service gives you more devices you can watch from, all current season episodes, HD, and exclusive content.

Pandora One: Pandora's awesome online music service is limited for free users to 40 hours a month. The Pandora One services gets you unlimited listening, no ads and fewer interruptions, as well as higher quality audio for $36/year.

Evernote: One of our favorite note-taking and web-clipping tools, Evernote may be worth the $5/month ($45/year) upgrade to Premium for you if you upload a lot of large files, want to sync files other than images/audio/ink/PDF, or need more collaboration capabilities.

Google Storage: If you need more space for your Gmail, Google Docs, and/or Picasa Web Albums, adding additional Google Storage is pretty cheap. For $5/year you can get 20GB of storage, and plans go up to 16 TB of space.

The services above are just the most-loved online services readers pay for and some of the reasons why the premium plans are worth it. If you have other thoughts about these or different online services, the comments are wide open.

You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter
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